Israel, Hamas Agree To Initial Hostage And Ceasefire Deal

Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas have reached the first stage of a ceasefire agreement that would begin the process of freeing Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Israel releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, allowing residents of northern Gaza to safely return to their homes, and withdrawing Israeli military forces from the strip.

The Associated Press confirmed the news with multiple U.S. officials on Wednesday, following an announcement by Qatar and Hamas. The press agency reported that the ceasefire could take effect as early as Sunday. News coverage on Wednesday from the region, where night had already fallen, showed both Gazans and Israelis publicly celebrating.

Much still depends on the implementation of the deal, which is set to occur in three stages. But there is now, at more than any time since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, a glimmer of hope for the long-suffering people of Gaza, devastated by a ferocious Israeli invasion, and for the families of the 98 Israeli hostages ― many of whom are dead ― whom the Israeli government believes remain in Hamas captivity.

The outcome provides an early political win for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump ― and a belated and bittersweet one for President Joe Biden, whose many months of start-and-stop diplomacy leading up to the deal sparked internal frustration and political backlash.

In a Truth Social post celebrating the ceasefire, Trump immediately credited his own November re-election for sealing the accord.

“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” he wrote.

After winning the presidential election two months ago, Trump had warned that “all hell will break out” if Hamas did not release the Israeli hostages by his inauguration on Jan. 20. With the permission of the Biden administration, Trump also dispatched Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, to oversee multilateral negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Qatar, where Egyptian, Qatari and U.S. officials served as mediators. Witkoff reportedly also exerted pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a surprise meeting on Saturday, according to a report in Haaretz quoting an Israeli senior diplomat.

Matt Duss, executive vice president of the left-leaning Center for International Policy, said Tuesday that the emerging deal was “good news,” but “long overdue.”

“Trump’s pressure seems to have made a difference here, which reflects badly on Biden,” said Duss, who has been critical of Biden for not exerting more pressure on the Israeli government. “The key question is what enforcement mechanisms there will be from phase to phase.”

Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestine Liberation Organization leaders and the author of “Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump,” likewise said he was “cautiously” optimistic, noting that a lot depended on implementation and follow-through.

“We could get a deal that’s stuck in Phase One,” said Elgindy, who teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. “There would be a lot of deference to the Israeli side. I don’t see Trump calling out Israel if they violate the terms of the agreement.”

The complete details of the agreement have not yet been made public, but the outlines of the ceasefire deal had emerged in news reports in the days preceding the official announcement.

The first phase of the agreement would see a temporary cessation of hostilities between Hamas and Israel, and the allowance of a massive influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Hamas would gradually release 33 Israeli hostages categorized as “humanitarian” ― children; women, including female soldiers; people who are sick; and older men, according to multiple news reports quoting Israeli officials.

Israel would release a significantly higher number of Palestinian prisoners from its custody for each hostage released, beginning with women and minors it is currently holding.

Israel is prepared to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from its prison system in the first phase, but the number would depend on how many of the first 33 hostages are still alive, The New York Times reported. Israeli authorities, who are seeking to recover the bodies of dead hostages as well, believe that about 36 of the hostages still in Gaza are dead.

During this first stage, the Israeli military would allow Gazans to return to northern Gaza, which has been largely destroyed, and would withdraw significant military personnel once the first group of hostages is completely returned.

Just over two weeks into the deal taking effect, Israel and Hamas would begin negotiating terms of a second stage in which Hamas would release adult male hostages, including male soldiers. Israel would, in exchange, initiate a broader round of Palestinian prisoner releases, including of high-level security prisoners, and withdraw its military from additional territory. By the completion of the deal, Israel would dismantle military installations and withdraw to the edges of Gaza, according to The Times of Israel.

A third and final stage would finalize any outstanding hostage and prisoner exchanges and allow the reconstruction of Gaza to begin.

The current war in Gaza is among the bloodiest conflicts of the 21st century. It began when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, and took some 250 Israelis and foreign nationals hostage.

Hamas’ brutal assault, the worst civilian massacre in Israel’s history, prompted an unprecedented Israeli aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza that has, in turn, elicited accusations of war crimes and even genocide from major foreign governments and human rights groups.

Over the course of 15 months, Israel has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians; displaced almost all of Gaza’s population; rendered huge swathes of the coastal enclave virtually uninhabitable; and deprived parts of the strip of adequate food, water, and essential supplies for sustained periods.

The Israel military insists that it has sought to limit civilian deaths and suffering despite Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure and underground tunnels, but military records and firsthand accounts have confirmed, at a bare minimum, an Israeli policy of tolerating much higher civilian casualties in this war than in previous conflicts.

In a rare diplomatic win since the war began, the Biden administration helped broker a temporary ceasefire deal in November 2023 that resulted in the release of 105 Israeli hostages and a surge in humanitarian aid for Gazan civilians.

But overall, the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has been a major political and diplomatic debacle for Biden, upending the final year of his term and contributing to a sense of global chaos that is sure to shape his legacy.

Biden’s virtually unconditional funding and diplomatic support for Israel cost him dearly with a portion of the Democratic electorate, and with a diverse array of observers who faulted him for failing to temper some of Israel’s excesses with effective pressure. At the same time, Biden’s increasingly open frustration with Netanyahu and criticism of Israeli policies became fodder for attacks from Trump and his allies on the staunchly pro-Israel right.

Jack Lew, who has served as Biden’s ambassador to Israel during the war, told The Times of Israel in a Sunday interview that Biden’s decision to stand with Israel “with huge opposition in the media, in parts of his own party, you could argue that it contributed to making his challenge for reelection insurmountable.”

Indeed, Biden largely refused progressive entreaties to leverage U.S. military aid to secure Israeli policy changes. Biden only withheld weapons from Israel on one occasion ― halting additional shipments of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May that U.S. officials say cause especially high civilian casualties in densely populated areas.

Since the onset of the war in Gaza, the United States has provided Israel $12.5 billion in military aid, sent Israel additional Iron Dome missile defense batteries, sold the country billions of dollars more in other weapons, and moved two aircraft carrier groups closer to Israel as a deterrent against Iran-backed groups across the region.

At the same time, Biden’s foreign policy team, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, has repeatedly struck out in its efforts to secure a second, lasting ceasefire. As early as February 2024, Biden expressed hope that a ceasefire deal was days away.

A multistage ceasefire proposal introduced in May, another near-miss moment for a deal, broadly resembled the agreement set to take effect now. At the time, Biden declared that Israelis could rest assured that a hostage release and ceasefire agreement would preserve their security, because Israel had already “devastated” Hamas’ military capacity, depriving it of the ability to launch another Oct. 7-style attack.

The closeness of such an agreement in May and June ― and Biden’s accompanying remarks ― are a source of frustration for Biden’s critics.

“If you could get this deal today, well, why couldn’t you get it in May?” Elgindy said. “This is a massive failure by Biden.”

“He needed to put pressure on the Israelis,” he added, citing the decision to continue arming Israel without additional conditions. “He needed to tell them, ‘Enough. This has to stop.’”

Blinken has publicly maintained that Hamas’ stubbornness was the primary obstacle to an agreement. But Israel issued new demands over the summer stipulating that any agreement with Hamas would have to allow Israel to maintain control of the Philadelphi corridor ― the border between southern Gaza and Egypt ― and heightening its stated conditions for allowing a return of Gazan civilians to the northern part of the strip. It is not yet clear whether the agreement now set to take effect envisions a role for the Israeli military in the Philadelphi corridor.

To make matters worse, many Israeli critics of Netanyahu suspect he has been avoiding the compromises needed to strike a deal in order to preserve a coalition government that includes the far-right parties led by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security, both of whom have denounced the current agreement.

In an early-November conversation with the family members of hostages, Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister whom Netanyahu fired amid months of bitter disagreement, said he told Netanyahu there was no security value in holding the Philadelphi corridor. Gallant instead suggested that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for personal or political reasons.

Netanyahu has maintained throughout the war that by squeezing Hamas, continued Israeli military “pressure” is essential to securing the release of hostages at the negotiating table.

But direct military action at the very least has been less fruitful. Israel has managed to rescue just eight hostages through military operations since the war began, while recovering the bodies of 40 hostages believed to be killed during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Israel also accidentally killed three hostages who were attempting to surrender themselves to the military in December 2023. And Hamas murdered another six hostages when Israeli forces were approaching in September.

Meanwhile, the failure to obtain a ceasefire has had an enormous human toll. Since the start of October 2024 alone, more than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militia fighters.

Alon Pinkas, a left-leaning former Israeli diplomat and supporter of Israel’s initial war goals in Gaza, further lamented in a Haaretz column on Tuesday that an estimated 120 Israeli soldiers had been killed in the fighting since details of the ceasefire proposal in May came out.

“For eight full months, such a deal was presented time and time again by Qatar and the United States,” he wrote. “But Netanyahu only had politics and his own survival in mind, and then the U.S. election and Trump’s inauguration.”